$6,000,000.

The general feeling of the responsible people of Cuba concerning the
second American intervention was one of extreme disappointment, owing to
the fact that they compared it with the intervention under General Wood,
or rather with the conduct of affairs under him. That first intervention
was under the control of military officers, and when they made up their
mind that a thing should be done, it was done, and as a rule well done,
and the example which was set in directing affairs of the government,
organizing public works, schools, in sanitation, and in auditing, made
the second intervention suffer by comparison.

CHAPTER XVI

Jose Miguel Gomez became President and Alfredo Zayas became
Vice-President of the Republic of Cuba on January 28, 1909. With a
substantial majority in Congress ready to do his will, and with the
immeasurable prestige of success, first over the Palma Administration
and later in the contest at the polls, the President was almost
all-powerful to adopt and to execute whatever designs he had, either for
the assumed welfare of Cuba or for the strengthening of his own
political position. He selected a Cabinet of his own supporters, as
follows:

Secretary of State, Senor Garcia Velez.
Secretary of Justice, Senor Divino.
Secretary of Government, Senor Lopez Leiva.
Secretary of the Treasury, Senor Diaz de Villegas.
Secretary of Public Works, Senor Chalons.
Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor, Senor Foyo.
Secretary of Public Instruction and Arts, Senor Meza.
Secretary of Sanitation and Charity, Senor Duque.
Secretary to the President, Senor Damaso Pasalodos.

Not many of these men had hitherto been conspicuous in the affairs of
the island, in either peace or war, and their capacity for service was
untried. It cannot be said that they were regarded with any large degree
of enthusiastic confidence by the nation at large. Yet there was
indubitably a general purpose, even among the most resolute
Conservatives, to give them a fair trial and to wish them success. Men
who had the welfare of Cuba at heart cherished that welfare far above
any mere personal or partisan ambitions.

[Illustration: JOSE MIGUEL GOMEZ]

It would not be easy to imagine a man much more different from the first
President of Cuba than his successor, the second President; though
indeed the latter was a man of no mean record, especially in war. Jose
Miguel Gomez was born